The Movie

The Cake Maker Recipe #1 – The Spark

Where did it all begin? It was way, way back in 2007 when I won £1500 from Images of Black Women Film Festival for my short film, Shantell Town. The money was to go towards another short film, but I’d just been shortlisted to make a £10,000 short with B3 Media. My script was chosen and after several drafts of development, we made Enter The Preacher in 2008. After two heavily, stylised films I wanted to go back to basics. This was now 2009 and the prize money still hadn’t produced another film. I went to Cannes Short Film Corner with Enter The Preacher and was inspired by the other filmmakers I met. Two women imparticular. They’d been Cannes the previous year with a short and returned with a feature. I was like, “I’m gonna do that”. I came back from Cannes with attitude: “I’m not asking. I’m telling”, “Taking control of my destiny”. Proper fighting talk.

Another thing I took from Cannes was the name Aristotle. Before going to Cannes my future-husband met a guy called Aristotle who was from Cannes. He told us he’d be there for the festival and we met up. I thought if this guy can be called Aristotle, then so can one of my characters. A normal person can have an amazing name, that is probably a part of their journey.

With The Cake Maker, I wanted to love making films and find my reason for doing it.